Tidal Wave
by piper maru duchovny
Summary: An unspeakable diagnosis shakes the Foster family to the core. Will they endure or be torn asunder? Can love triumph even in the possibility of pure heartache? Adamsfoster.


**Freud would probably have something to say about me taking my mom's diagnosis and turning into a love story between two women but he's dead and I don't care if I'm crazy. Anyway, this is a sort of prologue to really set up the story that we're about to jump into here. Mainly I created this to keep me occupied while my mom was getting her treatment and I'll probably continue to do so when I accompany her each week.  
**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing recognizable and seek to gain no profit.**

* * *

_Make me a promise here tonight,  
Love like a tidal wave,  
Dreamless in early graves,  
Never want it to be this way,  
The chemicals will bring you home again,  
This is it, when it's done we can say that,  
When it's sudden death we fight back...  
-Pierce the Veil  
_

* * *

The room was painted in muted colors that were meant to be calming but they didn't steady Lena's shaking hands or stop her feet from tapping out an anxious staccato on the tile floor. She sought out Stef's hand and laced their fingers together; she drew her love's hand to her lips and pressed a gentle kiss to the back of the blonde's palm. Stef was stoic as ever- the only sign of her worry was the downward cast corners of her mouth where they usually lifted; she tried to smile for her wife's sake and Lena appreciated the effort. "It's okay, love."

"No, it's not," she insisted. Then, in that moment, she exhaled and schooled her features – brought her emotions back into check. "I'm sorry, Stef… I'm trying to be positive about all this. I believe in my heart that it will be okay, I do, because I cannot imagine a world where we don't grow old together but those statistics… I can't raise five kids by myself."

"I'm not going anywhere," Stef promised. Careful to keep her IV arm straight, she pulled the brunette to her side and kissed her head as she wrapped an arm around her. "This stupid disease is not taking me from you and our babies without one hell of a fight. I've got plans for you, Lena Foster – plans that involve dancing with you at our grandbabies' wedding and I mean Jude's babies' wedding."

"Good." The raven haired woman swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked away the tears. "I love you."

"I love you, too," Stef whispered in her ear. "I hate this medicine – I want to kiss you."

"I'll kiss you instead," Lena countered and pressed her mouth to her wife's neck. She left a trail of soft, barely open mouthed, kisses from collarbone to jaw before nuzzling her nose just below the blonde's ear. "I love you. I love you. I love you."

"Sit with me," Stef pleaded. She scooted to one side of the small recliner and yanked on Lena's hand until she settled into the small space beside her.

"Careful of your IV," she reminded her. "You don't want that alarm going off again."

Stef rolled her eyes. "Fuck the IV."

"Stefanie Marie Adams Foster!"

"Sorry, love, but 'fuck it' if I can't hold you."

Lena sighed and leaned against her – she wasn't going to argue with her headstrong wife during chemo. Things had been difficult physically since the diagnosis and she longed for the normalcy of being in her love's embrace. "Do you wish you could rewind three weeks and just unknow all of this?"

"No." Stef's voice was firm and unwavering in confidence. "No because knowing means we can fight for more time while there's still a chance for more time – I want every possible day, every second, with you and the kids even if that means chemo for the rest of my life."

Lena let out a shuddering sigh and tried to get control over herself as a few tears managed to escape.

"Don't cry, sweetheart."

"I'm sorry that I'm such a mess," she whispered. "You're the one with cancer and I'm the one falling apart."

"Don't apologize," Stef insisted. "Remember those books that Jude loves so much – Harry Potter – and the old wizard tells Harry not to pity the dead but the living? The way I see it is kind of like that. I'm the one who is sick but the worst case scenario – I get an advanced ticket to the pearly gates – you're the one who has to live, love. And I know that being the one left alive, the one left with five grieving kids, that idea is terrifying. You are doing amazing, Lena. If the roles were reversed, I wouldn't be able to get out of bed at the thought of losing you. You are so brave – I wish I was half as brave as you are."

Lena laughed. "I'm not brave, I'm scared out of my mind."

"Bravery isn't the lack of fear but rather courage in the face of it."

"You stole that from a Hallmark card," the brunette insisted with a laugh.

"Maybe but it is still true."

_**Three Weeks Earlier**_

"Would you stop," Lena asked as she placed a hand on her wife's knee as her foot thunked against the metal base of the exam table.

"Sorry." Stef sighed and purposefully stilled her swinging legs. "Just… they wouldn't have called us in if the tests had shown nothing, right?"

"Don't assume the worst," she pleaded. "Doctor Hunter said that it could be a whole number of things."

"Yeah." She sighed again. "But, Lena, the man is an oncologist – if it was just an infection or cyst wouldn't he have just referred me back to my GP or some kind of specialist?"

"He is also a hematologist and maybe he just wanted to follow up with you before releasing you back to Doctor Ahad."

"Maybe," she relented. "It was just supposed to be a simple post shooting CT scan to see if the bullet had moved!"

"I know." Lena exhaled slowly – she had a knot of worry rooted deeply in her rib cage but she had to be the rock that Stef usually was for her today. "Whatever it is, cancer or infection or alien implant, we will make it through it together."

"I know." Stef curled her hand around her wife's waist and pulled her between her dangling legs before tipping her head to press a gentle kiss to her lips. "I love you so much, Lena Elizabeth Adams Foster, and I really appreciate you holding it together for me since I know you're for sure a basket case on the inside."

"I love you, too, Stefanie Marie Adams Foster," she countered and wrapped her arms around her neck. "I may be a basket case on the inside but I have faith that everything is going to work out the way that it's supposed to – we have been through too much for the universe to screw us over now that things have finally gotten on stable ground."

"And you're always right," she teased gently. Her arms curled around Lena and she sunk a hand into the thick curls that her wife had let go wild after her shower that morning, holding her love against her shoulder as she took a few steadying deep breaths. "We're going to be okay."

"So okay," she promised and dropped a kiss to Stef's shoulder as she lowered her arms to wrap around her abdomen that had caused them so much worry over the last two weeks.

A knock came on the door and in stepped a man in his early thirties with a bit of scruff on his chin, his oxford shirt untucked, and his tie loosened at his neck. He placed Stef's file on the counter as he walked in and offered them a warm smile. "Hello again, Fosters."

"Hello Doctor Hunter," Stef greeted him; she kept one arm around Lena and shook the man's hand with her free one.

Lena copied the greeting. "Hello."

"How are you feeling," Doctor Hunter asked as he grabbed her file and took a seat on the stool, wheeling closer to the pair as he flipped the file open. "Any pain in your abdomen? Any new symptoms?"

"A bit of pulling at the scar," Stef admitted. "That's all."

"Alright," he told her and added it to his notes. "Now have you heard anything from my office since we did your biopsy last week?"

"No," Lena answered. "All we had was the reminder call about the appointment."

"Alright," he told them. He turned a few pages in her file and read for a moment before casting it to one side. "Okay, well… It is cancer."

The world seemed to halt for a second.

"It is," Stef asked with the last bit of air she had in her lungs.

"Yes," he told them softly. "It's what we call a cholangiocarcinoma which is a very aggressive and rare form of liver cancer."

"What," Lena began but stopped as tears choked her voice. "What's her prognosis?"

"Stef," Doctor Hunter addressed the blonde. "Stef, you're what we consider stage four because it has spread to your lungs – what that means… This is a cancer that is incurable, I can't fix it, and due to the spread it means that I can't operate. What we can hope to do is stop the growth with chemotherapy and give you more time."

Stef let out a body shaking sob and turned into Lena's side – she was always the strong one, not even letting out a tear when she got shot, but this took the ground right out from under her. Lena wrapped her arms protectively around her and fought to keep her own tears at bay. "How long?"

"Without chemotherapy," Doctor Hunter began. "Due to the spread and rate of growth, a year or less."

"Oh god," Lena breathed. Her mind raced through the following year – the twins sixteenth birthday, Jude's fourteenth, Callie and Brandon's seventeenth; their first wedding anniversary was still a couple months away, the anniversary of their eleventh year together, a year as mothers of Callie and Jude.

"I can't make any promises," he told them. "But with chemo, we can offer you at least the chance for some more time – it won't be easy but I can give you a chance."

"Can we take some time to think about this?" Lena thought about her childhood and when she had seen her grandmother go through the hell of chemo when she was six and how it had made her violently ill, how it made her lose all her hair.

"No," Stef interjected. "I want to fight. We have five kids and I need more time with them, more time with Lena… I want to fight."

"Good," he told her. "I am very hopeful that with treatment we can blow these numbers out of the water, Stef. I can get you on the schedule as soon as next week and we'll go as hard at this as we possibly can. You'll have weekly treatments for three weeks and then we'll take a week off; we'll do two months like this and then redo the tests that we did last week and see where we're at then, okay?"

"Okay," Stef told him as she wiped at her tears.

"I'll give you two a few moments and then my nurse will be in with an information packet and take you up to scheduling so we can get things rolling," Doctor Hunter told them as he stood and exited the room.

Stef slid off the table and pulled her wife in for a tight hug as she cried. Lena's arms came up around her waist and she rocked her back and forth, humming an old jazz song that her father was fond of as she rubbed circles on the blonde's back. "It's going to be okay, Stef." She kissed her shoulder. "We are going to fight this thing and we'll win."

"I don't want to leave you and Brandon and Callie, Jesus, Mariana, and Jude… I need to see them grow up, Lena."

"You will," she promised. "We'll get through this."

She pulled back from the embrace to look at Lena as she wiped the tears from her face. "How are we going to tell the kids?"

"Together – just like we do everything else."


End file.
